


help yourself to a bit of what is all around you

by thingswithwings



Category: Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Chromatic Character, Gen, Saving the World, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-28
Updated: 2007-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha wonders why the Doctor never told her that humans have been travelling around the galaxy for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	help yourself to a bit of what is all around you

They wait just long enough: when Martha starts feeling bored with Tom, and starts feeling suffocated by her family, and starts feeling itchy feet for travel – when she starts waiting for the Doctor to show up to take her away from all this, that's when they make her the offer.

"Dr. Jones?" The woman at her door is young and pretty, with sharp dark eyes and a professional manner. Her accent is clipped, but sounds American.

"Yes," Martha answers. She's still not used to the honourific, even though she's finally earned it.

"I'm Carolyn Lam. I'm here to offer you a job."

-

It turns out that Jack's behind it, of course; Jack, who listens to her and drinks with her but looks uncomfortable whenever she walks into Torchwood. Jack, who doesn't seem like the same man when the Doctor's not around. Martha wonders if she's different, too. So, on his recommendation, Martha finds herself flying first-class to America. Dr. Lam gives her reading material and answers her questions.

Martha wonders why the Doctor never told her that humans have been travelling around the galaxy for years.

-

"I'm prescribing bedrest," Martha says. Colonel Sheppard nods obediently.

"And when I say 'bedrest,'" Martha continues, "I mean _resting_ in a _bed_ ; this bed, in fact." Before the Colonel can raise his eyebrows and protest his innocence, she adds, "the following things do not count as bedrest: walking around the corridors, watching movies in the lounge, playing basketball – "

"That was only the one time," Sheppard says. "And it was the Atlantis _playoffs_."

Martha keeps talking, undaunted by his charm. "Going off-world, activating Ancient laboratories, breaking into the mess hall at night, stick-fighting, or running."

From the other room, Keller calls, "Furniture!"

"And no moving furniture," Martha finishes, nodding.

John shrugs. "It was the weekend to help Ronon move."

She grins at him. "Don't make me tie you down."

-

Her very first day in Atlantis had been hell: a Wraith-engineered pseudovirus had swept the city, past every quarantine blockade they'd put up. Martha didn't know where anything was or what half of the weird Ancient equipment did, but she threw herself into it anyway, setting up a triage system and moving hastily from bed to bed, administering pain medication and taking blood samples and sometimes just mopping foreheads with a cool cloth.

One woman – she had introduced herself when Martha arrived, but she couldn't remember her name (Taylor? Tegan?) – gripped Martha's hand as she administered a shot to her arm.

"Thank you," she said, with a weird intensity. Her hand was strong, gripping hers firmly.

"I'm just doing my job," Martha whispered, never sure how to handle this. She applied a cold compress to the woman's neck with her right hand; the woman was still holding her left, pressing their fingers together.

"Nonetheless," the woman – Teyla, her name was Teyla – said. "Thank you, doctor."

-

"That's nothing," Martha says, swallowing the last of her American beer. "I once fought killer robots with a lightning bolt. And these giant crab-things. And plus there's this whole thing where I saved the planet."

Ronon nods, impressed, and hands her another one. "What kinds of killer robots?" he asks.

-

"I think you'll survive, Doctor McKay," she says, smiling.

"Mmmm, well, we'll see, won't we? And when my hand gets infected and falls off and I am no longer capable of using my brilliance to save the city, you'll wish you'd taken this more seriously."

"I'm sure I'll be very embarrassed," she deadpans. Rodney's lips quirk, like he's trying not to smile. She administers a local and then starts giving him stitches; it's not a bad cut, but it can't hurt to take precautions.

After a few minutes of silence, he clears his throat. "You should come with us," he says, speaking quickly. "On a mission. We've got one coming up where we need to take someone from the medical staff."

Martha's only been through the gate that one time.

"Sure," she says.

-

After hanging out with the Doctor, fighting Wraith and Replicators and meeting aliens is just her speed; she even finds it relaxing. Martha spends her days figuring out last-minute cures for bizarre superbugs, reversing accidental bodyswaps, and sequencing Wraith DNA; in the evenings, she goes back to her room and sleeps in her bed, breathing the same rich sea air every night. It's alien and exciting and warm and human all at once. And she sometimes gets kidnapped off-world, and she sometimes loses a bet with Zelenka and has no chocolate for a week, and she sometimes ends the day with friends dead beneath her hands. But she's not waiting any more: she eases the suffering that she can, and she watches the double-moons rise over the planet, and she makes a home for herself here in the lost city, the city of the lost.

Martha breathes the same rich sea air every night, and is content.


End file.
